Since buying the New Jersey Nets, Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has been hell-bent on stealing whatever spotlight he could from the New York Knicks.
His plan—and it's an ambitious one, to say the least—has been to make the New Jersey Nets relevant enough in the New York basketball scene that they can over take the Knicks in popularity by the time they move to Brooklyn after next season.
It started with a building-sized Nets billboard outside Madison Square Garden that angered Knicks owner James Dolan so much he posted his own billboard of Amar'e Stoudemire directly outside the construction site in Brooklyn where the Nets' new arena will be.
It then led to a battle for the most coveted player on the trading block this year in Carmelo Anthony. The Knicks eventually won the Anthony sweepstakes, but the Nets made it difficult for them and ultimately made the team pay more than it wanted to to get the superstar forward.
Now, on the eve of one of the most important days in more than a decade for the Knicks, the day Carmelo Anthony is introduced in a 5 pm press conference followed by his first game in his new home, the Nets try to steal the spotlight once again by acquiring Deron Williams from the Utah Jazz.
Prokhorov vowed that he would make a move before the deadline on Thursday after he lost the Melo sweepstakes, and he delivered a doozy by obtaining arguably the best point guard in the game for Devin Harris, Derrick Favors and two draft picks.
It's hard to tell what Utah is thinking, but Williams has been unhappy in Salt Lake City this year, and either he ruffled some feathers within the organization during his last feud with Jerry Sloan or Utah doesn't want to go through the circus that Cleveland and Denver have gone through the last two years.
Either way, the Nets get a superstar player in his prime while stealing some of the Knicks' thunder today. Even worse for the Knicks and their fans is the fact that Williams, along with New Orleans point guard Chris Paul, is one of the players the Knicks were looking to add via free agency after next season.
Now that Prokhorov has Williams on his team, not only will he be able to offer him the most money on any contract extension, but he will also undoubtedly do whatever he can to keep him from going to the Knicks. Of course, the threat of a drastically changed CBA could throw a monkey wrench in any of these plans.
With that said, Knicks fans need to relax. This trade could end up being a great move...for the New York Knicks.
Think about it for a minute. This is a very risky move by the Nets. Basically, the team is betting that by adding Deron Williams, it will have the marquee player it needs to be competitive enough that it can lure other big-time players to the team.
If all goes well, the Nets would move to their new home in Brooklyn with Deron Williams as the face of their franchise, Brook Lopez and another superstar, say Orlando center Dwight Howard. In other words, Prokhorov and the Nets are hoping that Deron Williams will do for them what Amar'e Stoudemire has done for the Knicks...make them an attractive place to play for NBA players.
Sounds like a great plan, right? Well, maybe, but the problem is the Nets are still the Nets. They are still the little brother to the Knicks, the same way the Mets are to the Yankees, the Jets are to the Giants and the Devils and Islanders are to the Rangers, period. That's the way it is in this town, and with the brief exception of the Mets during the mid 1980s, even winning a title can't change it.
The Nets had their chance to take the New York area by storm. They had great teams in the early to mid 2000s, making consecutive trips to the NBA Finals in 2001-02 and 2002-03, and for the most part nobody cared, even though the Knicks were terrible.
In fact, during the team's first run to the Finals during the 2001-02 NBA season, I was able to attend Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Boston Celtics. I drove to Continental Airlines Arena in the Meadowlands, walked up to the ticket window and purchased tickets for the game, at face value no less, about an hour before tip-off because the game was not yet sold out.
For comparison's sake, Carmelo Anthony's first game at the Garden, a Wednesday night, regular season game against the Milwaukee Bucks with zero playoff implications, is not only sold out, but courtside tickets are going for more than $10,000 a seat as well.
The Nets couldn't get players to stay or come to New Jersey despite winning two Eastern Conference titles and being led by Jason Kidd, a player who epitomizes the pass-first point guard and has made every player he has ever played with better.
Sure, the Nets were playing in the lowly Meadowlands in one of the worst arenas of all time, and the future move to Brooklyn should help a bit with attendance and popularity, but while Brooklyn is indeed a borough of New York City, it is not the heart of Manhattan, and the new Nets arena, no matter how state of the art it is, will NEVER be Madison Square Garden.
With this deal, Prokhorov has put his team on the clock to prove to Deron Williams that not only can the Nets compete with the Knicks for the spotlight, but also that with him as the face of the franchise, the Nets will be able to not only draw fans, but other star players as well.
Basically, the Nets have one year to build around Williams enough that he will want to sign an extension rather than test free agency, or else they will find themselves in the same boat that Denver was in this year and Cleveland the year prior.
It could prove to be a daunting task for the franchise, especially for a player like Williams, who was unhappy when Utah was challenging for a lower playoff seed and has never had to suffer through anywhere close to the types of seasons the Nets have had the past two years.
So how do the Knicks fit into this whole thing? Well, with Williams playing within a stone's throw of the Big Apple, he'll be able to see firsthand how much the area loves the Knicks, how much of a buzz the city has around Amar'e and Melo and how the only other place in New York that can compare to playing in Madison Square Garden is donning pinstripes at Yankee Stadium.
Maybe I'm wrong on this and the Nets really have pulled the old proverbial rug from under the Knicks' future plans. We have a year before we know for sure.
Next February, though, when the Knicks are in the Eastern Conference playoff picture and the combination of Stoudemire, Chauncey Billups and Anthony has a packed MSG filled with electricity and excitement every night, while Williams plays in a half-empty arena in Newark, NJ, watching Brook Lopez continue to regress and guys like Travis Outlaw and Anthony Morrow continue to underwhelm, the Nets may realize that by bringing Deron Williams to New Jersey, all they did was prove how great playing in New York will be.
Phil Hughes Damaso Marte Mariano Rivera Kerry Wood Francisco Cervelli Chad Moeller
0 件のコメント:
コメントを投稿